- The speaker is the Executive Director and CEO of the Canadian Tax Foundation
- They discuss their career path, starting as a tax lawyer and eventually moving to a big 4 firm
- Trends in the tax profession include increased specialization, globalization, and transparency
- The Canadian Tax Foundation's role is in tax education, policy, and research
- They provide resources and support for students and young practitioners in the tax field
- The foundation also offers cash prizes for student papers and has blogs on relevant topics

- The Canadian Tax Foundation produces a blog and newsletter to share tax scholarship more efficiently than traditional journals
- The newsletter is a way for students to establish themselves and the writing is of high quality
- Tax law is for smart and curious individuals from various backgrounds
- The profession is becoming more diverse and there is a need for more tax lawyers
- Legislative changes have reduced the advantage of experienced professionals, creating opportunities for newcomers
- The speaker loves tax law and appreciates the interviewer's thoughtful insights on the subject.

Heather Evans is Executive Director and CEO of the Canadian Tax Foundation and someone who loves tax law. Listen to her talk about how she discovered tax law, came to love it, and became one of Canada's most important people in tax!

You want an I ❤️ TAX LAW mug? (or t-shirt, pillow, bath mat...) 👉 https://www.redbubble.com/people/drbombtaxstic/shop

Canadian Tax Foundation website
➡️ in English ➡️ https://www.ctf.ca/ctfweb/en 
➡️ en Français ➡️ https://www.fcf-ctf.ca/CTFWEB/FR/

Canadian Tax Focus newsletter: 
➡️ in English ➡️ https://www.ctf.ca/ctfweb/EN/Publications/Newsletters/Canadian_Tax_Focus/EN/Newsletters/Canadian_Tax_Focus/CTF_archive.aspx?hkey=8e387d23-c842-4dd9-95d1-e7433bc16c93
➡️ en Français ➡️ https://www.fcf-ctf.ca/CTFWEB/FR/PUBLICATIONS/NEWSLETTERS/CANADIAN_TAX_FOCUS/FR/NEWSLETTERS/CANADIAN_TAX_FOCUS/CTF_ARCHIVE.ASPX?

💸 Digital Tax Log by Allison Christians
➡️ in English ➡️ https://www.ctf.ca/ctfweb/EN/Publications/Newsletters/Digital_Tax_Log/EN/Newsletters/Blogs_and_Reports/Digital_Services_Updates/DTL_Main_Page.aspx
➡️ en Français ➡️ https://www.fcf-ctf.ca/ctfweb/FR/Publications/Newsletters/Journal_sur_la_taxe_du_numerique/FR/Newsletters/Blogs_and_Reports/Digital_Services_Updates/DTL_Main_Page.aspx

You're the Executive Director and CEO of the Canadian Tax Foundation, which is the most important tax organization in Canada and maybe the world.

And you agreed to come and talk to my students today about careers in tax.

Who better than you to tell them about interesting career paths?

And you embarrass me with your accolades.

But 1 of the things I really do love most about my job is the opportunity to talk about tax, especially to talk to students, because it is a fantastic career, and I'm really excited to share with them some of my thoughts.

It is a fantastic career, and we are in the most fortunate position when we get to talk to students because they're new and they're young and full of life and it's wonderful.

Let's start with your fascinating career path.

So after I finished law school, I article that a firm in Toronto and spend a few years there as an associate.

And even though no offense, Allison, I did not enjoy tax that much.

When I first encountered it at law school, I was quickly converted.

So I had a summer job between second and third year where I did a fair bit of tax.

And to my surprise, I really, really loved it.

So I went back and took more courses in third year, and ended up articling at that firm and going back as an associate and joined their tax department.

And it was fantastic and learned so much in my early years.

It's really just incredible how much there is to learn.

And after a number of years practicing law for a bunch of different reasons, I decided to move to 1 of the big 4.

And that was less common then than it is now.

And that was really driven by a few trends that I saw in the profession.

And at that time, it was very hard for law firms, especially small law firms, to specialize, so subspecialties within tax.

So we were seeing increasing amounts of cross-border issues.

And again, the big 4 seemed to be sort of well-connected in terms of building their networks in a way that the law firms then were not.

And I had a lot of clients with international tax issues.

And my last 5 years before I retired, I was the national managing partner of tax for the firm, which was a lot of fun.

So I don't know, global executive and the firm's board.

And then I went to the Canadian Tax Foundation where I have very happily been, you know, leading things for the last 5 years.

So you did what a lot of students do, which is you discovered tax.

You didn't go to law school thinking you're going to be a tax lawyer.

So what kind of lawyer were you going to be?

So when I went to law school in second year tax was mandatory.

And now that I reflect back on it, what a fortunate thing that was, because even if I didn't want to be a tax lawyer, as you know, Allison, taxes everywhere, you know, whether you're a family lawyer or a corporate lawyer, like it's just it affects so many things.

So it's good to have that working knowledge.

But I was going to probably be focused on corporate finance or securities law.

So this was a time when the markets are really hot and that was a sexy area to practice and the firm I was at was a business law firm and I really enjoyed that work.

But I found that the tax was just so interesting, right?

And so fascinating and no disrespect to securities lawyers, but our statute is way bigger than the securities.

So you alluded to trends that are going on in the world when you were working through law firms in the big 4.

So I would say those trends were early then and now they're very pronounced.

So you know law is reflective of clients and the economy and government decisions and circumstances and those change and evolve But globalization has been a very pronounced trend.

So even within a fairly small mid-market economy like Canada, most clients of any size will have international tax issues.

And whether that's a corporation that's expanding outside of Canada or a family who has a US citizen that they need to include in their estate planning.

And those issues have just become more pronounced.

The other 1 that I mentioned, the other trend is specialization.

So when I first started practicing law, you were a tax lawyer, and you sort of covered the waterfront in terms of tax.

And now, of course, within a tax practice of any size whatsoever, you have specialization, whether it's international tax or transfer pricing or estate planning, you know, the issues are unique and different.

If anything, the world of tax has become more complex.

And the other interesting trend that really was not started then, but is very big now, of course, is transparency.

So there's very interesting issues around disclosure and client information being in the public domain, globally within Canada.

And so the role of a tax lawyer to assist clients in being compliant, in making those disclosures and then navigating and helping them through any controversies that may ensue.

That whole dispute resolution area has become much more at the forefront than it was even 5 or 10 years ago.

It's such a fascinating mix of procedure and negotiation, mediation, and then the sort of technical law interpretation.

And I think that's probably why a lot of people like tax law, because of that, right?

You can specialize to a point where you're just the technical person, if that's what you want.

But you can also be that person that has a more general practice and tax is 1 of the aspects.

Exactly, And it's multidisciplinary, which is really rewarding.

And, you know, every client's tax issues are slightly different.

So you're always learning new things and encountering novel issues, which I think makes for a really rewarding career.

I mean, boredom is never really going to be a risk in a tax practice.

There's always some new adventure just around the corner.

And I think, you know, as executive director and CEO at the Canadian Tax Foundation, you can really speak to the trends.

They reveal themselves in the pages of the Canadian Tax Journal.

And you also see the interesting areas that people wanna have workshops and conferences and so on.

So I wonder if you would talk a little bit about how younger people who may not really understand why do we need a Canadian Tax Foundation?

Or like how might you get involved in that?

If you were a student sort of just jumping into tax, breaking into the profession, you know, what is the Canadian tax foundation to you and how should you leverage it?

So I'll give you just 30 seconds advertorial if you will.

The Canadian Tax Foundation has 3 mandates.

They're tax education, tax policy and tax research.

We rely on our many, many awesome volunteers to help us do what we do, which is publish everything from the Canadian Tax Journal to treatises on specific topics.

We run a series of conferences, and We support academic research as well, which is a really critical part of our mandate.

What we do is we provide a forum for interested, educated, well-informed stakeholders to come together and discuss and debate important issues around public policy, finance, and taxation in Canada and around the world.

And it's really, that's our key role is to drive those informed debates and discussions so Canada ends up in a better place.

So you may say, how is this relevant for me as a student?

So we, as I mentioned, rely upon volunteers and we have over 13,000 members across Canada.

So basically every practicing tax lawyer, accountant, government officials, people in industry and tax professors are our members.

And what we do for students is we basically help them get established.

So we have amazing resources in terms of helping you do research, whether you're a law student, whether you're articling or as an associate or partner at a firm.

And our librarians provide free research and support.

We have an amazing library, a physical library, 1 of the biggest in the world.

But in these days, and even before these days, we do a lot of outreach digitization, access to online resources, tax find, which has about 50 years of tax research, that's our online tool.

And at our conferences, we provide opportunities to write papers, to speak and present them, a way to build your profile, build your career, become known in the tax community to clients and to referring sources.

And we also, for your first 10 years of practice, we have a young practitioner program that now has well over a dozen chapters across Canada where people who are early to their tax careers can get together and organize events, discussion groups, study groups, just really create their own communities of interest within their local markets, and help 1 another advance.

And that's 1 of the unique things about the tax bar that I really love is people are very collegial and very helpful.

There's a recognition that it's not easy, but it's a lot of fun and it's very rewarding and we can all help each other and improve the quality of what we all do for for clients and for the tax community.

So it's kind of fun being able to stimulate all of that.

And for students, I should also add, we have cash prizes for students papers.

So get your professors get your professors to nominate you and you too could win some cash.

The only thing you forgot to mention that the Canadian Tax Foundation does is they also have blogs.

Oh yes, yes, 1 Alison Christians I believe might have 1 of those blogs on digital tax.

And there are others, and I think 1 of the reasons I was interested in producing that blog with students, I might add, for Canadian Tax Foundation is that it's 1 way to get scholarship out into the universe on a more efficient timeline, shall we say.

Yes, so I would say that that's a really good point.

So the Canadian tax journal is 1 of the most prestigious tax journals in the world, peer-reviewed and all those good things, but it takes time to get through all of the various editorial processes and the peer reviews.

So getting something more quickly to market is really critical, so hence the blogs, and we do newsletters too.

We have a newsletter every month and for many students that's a way to establish themselves.

1 of our newsletters is focused on young practitioners and the writing there is fantastic.

There's different ways to get out there these days.

I love that you mentioned that and I'll add the links to those sites to this video so that students can go down below and see and follow those links to go find the newsletter and find the blogs and so on.

And I think the last thing I'd like to get your thoughts on is that sometimes people think that tax law is for a certain kind of person.

It depends what you mean by that kind of person.

I would say it is for a certain kind of person.

And that would be a smart, curious person.

And so anybody can be that person from various backgrounds, the tax bar is a lot more diverse than it used to be, there's a long ways to go.

But when I look at the contingent of young lawyers and accountants who are coming into the practice of tax, it's really encouraging, because they're really smart, really motivated, and they challenge the received ways of doing things, which I think is really healthy, whether that's the business model of law firms, or how you serve clients, how you build a practice, I think that's all great.

And the 1, I think, positive thing about all this change that we're seeing is that it means that for newer people entering the profession, they're not that far behind, right?

The head start that people may have had some time ago has really kind of been reduced because of all this avalanche of legislative change that we've seen in the last number of years.

There really aren't enough tax lawyers out there, in my opinion, and they're hard to find.

It's been a great career path for me and for a lot of people I know.

And it's just nice to know that somebody who's as thoughtful as you and interested in all the different dimensions of the tax law is in charge of this environment and has such a role to play.

So thank you so much for your thoughts on tax, careers in tax, the tax profession, and the changing world we live in.

Well thank you, thanks for having me today.

I appreciate it and I will just conclude by saying I do love tax law.


Speaker 0: Hi Heather, welcome to Tax Class.

Speaker 1: Thank you for having me.

Speaker 0: You're a VIP in Canadian Tax. You're the Executive Director and CEO of the Canadian Tax Foundation, which is the most important tax organization in Canada and maybe the world. And you're running the show over there. And you agreed to come and talk to my students today about careers in tax. Who better than you to tell them about interesting career paths?

Speaker 1: Well, thank you for the invitation. I'm delighted to be here. And you embarrass me with your accolades. But 1 of the things I really do love most about my job is the opportunity to talk about tax, especially to talk to students, because it is a fantastic career, and I'm really excited to share with them some of my thoughts.

Speaker 0: It is a fantastic career, and we are in the most fortunate position when we get to talk to students because they're new and they're young and full of life and it's wonderful. So let's start at the beginning though. Let's start with your fascinating career path. Tell us all about you.

Speaker 1: Well, thank you. So I am a tax lawyer by training. So after I finished law school, I article that a firm in Toronto and spend a few years there as an associate. And even though no offense, Allison, I did not enjoy tax that much. When I first encountered it at law school, I was quickly converted.

So I had a summer job between second and third year where I did a fair bit of tax. And to my surprise, I really, really loved it. So I went back and took more courses in third year, and ended up articling at that firm and going back as an associate and joined their tax department. And it was fantastic and learned so much in my early years. It's really just incredible how much there is to learn.

And after a number of years practicing law for a bunch of different reasons, I decided to move to 1 of the big 4. And that was less common then than it is now. And that was really driven by a few trends that I saw in the profession. 1 was the increased specialization. And at that time, it was very hard for law firms, especially small law firms, to specialize, so subspecialties within tax.

And then globalization. So we were seeing increasing amounts of cross-border issues. And again, the big 4 seemed to be sort of well-connected in terms of building their networks in a way that the law firms then were not. And I had a lot of clients with international tax issues. So I ended up moving to Deloitte.

I was there for almost 20 years. And my last 5 years before I retired, I was the national managing partner of tax for the firm, which was a lot of fun. So I don't know, global executive and the firm's board. And then I went to the Canadian Tax Foundation where I have very happily been, you know, leading things for the last 5 years.

Speaker 0: Okay. So you did what a lot of students do, which is you discovered tax. You weren't born a tax lawyer. You didn't go to law school thinking you're going to be a tax lawyer. So what kind of lawyer were you going to be?

Speaker 1: That's a good question. So when I went to law school in second year tax was mandatory. And so I had no choice. Everyone had to take tax. And now that I reflect back on it, what a fortunate thing that was, because even if I didn't want to be a tax lawyer, as you know, Allison, taxes everywhere, you know, whether you're a family lawyer or a corporate lawyer, like it's just it affects so many things.

So it's good to have that working knowledge. But I was going to probably be focused on corporate finance or securities law. So this was a time when the markets are really hot and that was a sexy area to practice and the firm I was at was a business law firm and I really enjoyed that work. But I found that the tax was just so interesting, right? And so fascinating and no disrespect to securities lawyers, but our statute is way bigger than the securities.

Speaker 0: Yeah, we have more pages to work with. That's right. Yeah, yeah. So you alluded to trends that are going on in the world when you were working through law firms in the big 4. Tell us about whether that's changed.

Speaker 1: So I would say those trends were early then and now they're very pronounced. So definitely globalization. So you know law is reflective of clients and the economy and government decisions and circumstances and those change and evolve But globalization has been a very pronounced trend. So even within a fairly small mid-market economy like Canada, most clients of any size will have international tax issues. And whether that's a corporation that's expanding outside of Canada or a family who has a US citizen that they need to include in their estate planning.

And those issues have just become more pronounced. The other 1 that I mentioned, the other trend is specialization. So when I first started practicing law, you were a tax lawyer, and you sort of covered the waterfront in terms of tax. And now, of course, within a tax practice of any size whatsoever, you have specialization, whether it's international tax or transfer pricing or estate planning, you know, the issues are unique and different. And so I think that trend is with us.

If anything, the world of tax has become more complex. And the other interesting trend that really was not started then, but is very big now, of course, is transparency. So there's very interesting issues around disclosure and client information being in the public domain, globally within Canada. And so the role of a tax lawyer to assist clients in being compliant, in making those disclosures and then navigating and helping them through any controversies that may ensue. That whole dispute resolution area has become much more at the forefront than it was even 5 or 10 years ago.

Speaker 0: I love that area. It's such a fascinating mix of procedure and negotiation, mediation, and then the sort of technical law interpretation. You mix all that together. And I think that's probably why a lot of people like tax law, because of that, right? You can specialize to a point where you're just the technical person, if that's what you want.

But you can also be that person that has a more general practice and tax is 1 of the aspects.

Speaker 1: Exactly, And it's multidisciplinary, which is really rewarding. And, you know, every client's tax issues are slightly different. So you're always learning new things and encountering novel issues, which I think makes for a really rewarding career. I mean, boredom is never really going to be a risk in a tax practice. There's always some new adventure just around the corner.

Speaker 0: Yeah, that's right. And I think, you know, as executive director and CEO at the Canadian Tax Foundation, you can really speak to the trends. They come out in the scholarship. They reveal themselves in the pages of the Canadian Tax Journal. And you also see the interesting areas that people wanna have workshops and conferences and so on.

So I wonder if you would talk a little bit about how younger people who may not really understand why do we need a Canadian Tax Foundation? Like what's the role of that? Or like how might you get involved in that? If you were a student sort of just jumping into tax, breaking into the profession, you know, what is the Canadian tax foundation to you and how should you leverage it?

Speaker 1: That's a really good question. So I'll give you just 30 seconds advertorial if you will. The Canadian Tax Foundation has 3 mandates. They're tax education, tax policy and tax research. We're a registered charity.

We rely on our many, many awesome volunteers to help us do what we do, which is publish everything from the Canadian Tax Journal to treatises on specific topics. We run a series of conferences, and We support academic research as well, which is a really critical part of our mandate. And we liaise with government. We do not advocate, we do not lobby. What we do is we provide a forum for interested, educated, well-informed stakeholders to come together and discuss and debate important issues around public policy, finance, and taxation in Canada and around the world.

And it's really, that's our key role is to drive those informed debates and discussions so Canada ends up in a better place. So you may say, how is this relevant for me as a student? So we, as I mentioned, rely upon volunteers and we have over 13,000 members across Canada. So basically every practicing tax lawyer, accountant, government officials, people in industry and tax professors are our members. And what we do for students is we basically help them get established.

So we have amazing resources in terms of helping you do research, whether you're a law student, whether you're articling or as an associate or partner at a firm. And our librarians provide free research and support. We have an amazing library, a physical library, 1 of the biggest in the world. But in these days, and even before these days, we do a lot of outreach digitization, access to online resources, tax find, which has about 50 years of tax research, that's our online tool. And at our conferences, we provide opportunities to write papers, to speak and present them, a way to build your profile, build your career, become known in the tax community to clients and to referring sources.

And we also, for your first 10 years of practice, we have a young practitioner program that now has well over a dozen chapters across Canada where people who are early to their tax careers can get together and organize events, discussion groups, study groups, just really create their own communities of interest within their local markets, and help 1 another advance. And that's 1 of the unique things about the tax bar that I really love is people are very collegial and very helpful. There's a recognition that it's not easy, but it's a lot of fun and it's very rewarding and we can all help each other and improve the quality of what we all do for for clients and for the tax community. So it's kind of fun being able to stimulate all of that. And for students, I should also add, we have cash prizes for students papers.

So get your professors get your professors to nominate you and you too could win some cash.

Speaker 0: Very good, very good pitch. The only thing you forgot to mention that the Canadian Tax Foundation does is they also have blogs.

Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, 1 Alison Christians I believe might have 1 of those blogs on digital tax. Yes, another topical item.

Speaker 0: And there are others, and I think 1 of the reasons I was interested in producing that blog with students, I might add, for Canadian Tax Foundation is that it's 1 way to get scholarship out into the universe on a more efficient timeline, shall we say.

Speaker 1: Yes, so I would say that that's a really good point. So the Canadian tax journal is 1 of the most prestigious tax journals in the world, peer-reviewed and all those good things, but it takes time to get through all of the various editorial processes and the peer reviews. So getting something more quickly to market is really critical, so hence the blogs, and we do newsletters too. We have a newsletter every month and for many students that's a way to establish themselves. 1 of our newsletters is focused on young practitioners and the writing there is fantastic.

It's as good as anything we publish. So you're absolutely right. There's different ways to get out there these days.

Speaker 0: I love that you mentioned that and I'll add the links to those sites to this video so that students can go down below and see and follow those links to go find the newsletter and find the blogs and so on. And I think the last thing I'd like to get your thoughts on is that sometimes people think that tax law is for a certain kind of person.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 0: And I think that's probably wrong.

Speaker 1: But it depends. It depends what you mean by that kind of person. I would say it is for a certain kind of person. And that would be a smart, curious person.

Speaker 0: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And so anybody can be that person from various backgrounds, the tax bar is a lot more diverse than it used to be, there's a long ways to go. But when I look at the contingent of young lawyers and accountants who are coming into the practice of tax, it's really encouraging, because they're really smart, really motivated, and they challenge the received ways of doing things, which I think is really healthy, whether that's the business model of law firms, or how you serve clients, how you build a practice, I think that's all great. And the 1, I think, positive thing about all this change that we're seeing is that it means that for newer people entering the profession, they're not that far behind, right? The head start that people may have had some time ago has really kind of been reduced because of all this avalanche of legislative change that we've seen in the last number of years. So I think there's a great opportunity.

There really aren't enough tax lawyers out there, in my opinion, and they're hard to find. And so I think it's a great career path.

Speaker 0: I gotta agree with you. It's been a great career path for me and for a lot of people I know. And it's just nice to know that somebody who's as thoughtful as you and interested in all the different dimensions of the tax law is in charge of this environment and has such a role to play. So thank you so much for your thoughts on tax, careers in tax, the tax profession, and the changing world we live in.

Speaker 1: Well thank you, thanks for having me today. I appreciate it and I will just conclude by saying I do love tax law.

Speaker 0: Yes, that's the correct ending. Thank you.

Speaker 1: You

See all Prof Christians transcripts on Youtube

Careers in Tax with Heather Evans, Exec Director & CEO of the Canadian Tax Foundation